


Christmas 1988

by swannkings



Series: Portrait of Imogen Swift [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hogwarts Mystery
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Meet the Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 12:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16892724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swannkings/pseuds/swannkings
Summary: Ginny Weasley is happy to welcome another girl into the Burrow, though her new friend has many secrets.





	Christmas 1988

Ginny Weasley was seven years old and completely enamored with her brothers, but as much as she loved them, it was always a fascination to have another girl in the house who wasn’t her mother. And Imogen was such a different kind of girl than Ginny, or her mother, or even those of the neighbors’ and extended relatives. It also helped, thought Ginny, they could have the same nickname.

Imogen had arrived at King’s Cross under Charlie’s wing and quickly ushered to the Anglia under Mr Weasley’s umbrella. Ginny immediately noticed how short her hair was, cropped in the back like Ronald’s, yet long enough in the front to swoop to one side and tuck behind an ear. Almost like the muggle fashion models Ginny had glimpsed in London.

Something else Ginny noticed was how quiet Imogen was, how she held back from everyone else until she was noticed. Ginny insisted on sitting in the backseat between Charlie and Imogen, allowing for Bill to sit up front and Percy left sandwiched between Charlie and the window. Imogen would laugh at jokes in the right places, and she was keen to let Ginny entwine their fingers and inspect the flecked polish on her fingernails, and would softly interject a few words into a conversation and politely answer her father’s questions - she held a Chaser position on the her house’s Quidditch team, she  _ had _ won the bet between Charlie and Liz, her parents had decided to spend the holidays with extended family in America, and yes Barnaby had left Pondwollop in her care.

Mrs Weasley took a quick shine to Bill’s and Charlie’s friend as well, kindly offering her the best chair near the hearth and a hot cup of tea. When night fell on the Burrow and the house grew louder as Fred and George and Ronald came in from garden, and voices carried up and down the stairs and from room to room, Ginny stuck close to Imogen, who’d graciously offered to stand near the stove and stir the bubbling stew so she wouldn’t be in the way. Ginny handed her the bowls to ladle supper into and passed them along to the others. When the table was cleared and the family had excused themselves, excitement arose in Ginny. Mrs Weasley had told her Imogen would be sharing her room, and she wondered if this is what big sisters did.

Imogen and Ginny stayed up past bedtime the first night, at the request of Ginny’s endless questions. Imogen was called ‘Mo’ by her family, not ‘Gen’ or ‘Genny’ as the younger girl had hoped. And she was a fan of the Holyhead Harpies. She had an older brother, but she hadn’t seen him in a long while - he had been in Ravenclaw house. Her favorite subjects were Charms and History of Magic. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to be when she grew up, but everyone liked to tell her she should be a Magizoologist or a Curse-Breaker for the Ministry. And she was in Slytherin house.

“That doesn’t scare you, does it?” Imogen asked. Ginny had helped her set up a spare cot near the window of the tiny bedroom. In the night, moonlight shone across Imogen’s cheek.

“No,” said Ginny. “Should it?”

“I don’t think so, but sometimes it makes people uncomfortable.”

Ginny knew there were rivalries between the Hogwarts houses, and she knew Percy held a particular disdain for Slytherin. In passing she’d heard relieved whispers from family friends and neighbors when they learned her brothers had been sorted into Gryffindor, and even her own parents had made remarks from time to time. But Imogen didn’t seem evil, or rude even.

“Will you paint my nails like yours, Imogen?”

“Of course, so long as your mum’s okay with it.”

In the following days, Imogen became embedded in the family’s routine. Ginny began to tie her long hair back at the nape of her neck, and began asking Ronald about the Holyhead Harpies when the others weren’t around. Imogen split her days between helping Mrs Weasley around the Burrow and keeping Charlie and Bill in check. The longer she was with them, the more pronounced she became. Soon her voice added to the others, loud and clear and full of joy. She wasn’t very good at Wizard’s Chess, which Ronald was please about, and she was kind to Percy when she didn’t need to be, and she spent hours in the cold with Charlie running passes and chasing enchanted stones on their brooms.

Until Christmas Eve. Imogen had awoke tired and remained quiet most of the day. She was still kind and polite, but her demeanor had changed. She seemed to disappear when no one was looking. Bill had gone out to the village to find her, but came back empty handed and whispered a conversation with their dad. Mrs Weasley had begun to pace from window to window, her hands worrying the hem of her shawl to death. Snow began to fall in the late afternoon, just before the sky swallowed up all of the light, and Imogen still hadn’t returned. Charlie, Bill, and Mr Weasley took another trek out before supper. They returned with a gust of snow on their backs, and a soggy looking Imogen between them.

Ginny watched from the dinner table as her dad and Bill knocked snow from their shoes and hung their cloaks by the door. As quick as they’d came, Charlie escorted Imogen up the stairs and away from prying eyes. No one spoke about the incident during supper, and Charlie came back down alone before all the heat had gone out of the pots. Ginny was put to bed without a fuss, but her room felt less inviting without Imogen there. She listened in the dark as her mum finished clearing up the kitchen, and her brothers stomped around overhead. Her parents hushed whispers as they passed up to their bedroom. She didn’t sleep, but shut her eyes as soon as she heard the door click open. The scent of Imogen’s soap filled the room with lavender. She crossed gently over the creaking floorboards and crawled under the blankets on the cot by the window. Imogen didn’t speak. When Imogen’s breathing deepened to a steady rise and fall, Ginny turned on her side and snuggled further under her own quilt, sleep taking her greedily.

At first, Ginny thought she heard one of the distant neighbor’s chickens calling up the sun, but the sky was still dark as ever when she opened her eyes. In the dim moonlight, she saw Imogen’s form on the cot. The blankets had dropped to the floor, and Imogen’s shoulders shook, soft whimpers came from her ragged breathing.

“Imogen?” Ginny’s hushed voice cut through the room. “ _ Imogen _ .”

The older girl jerked her head up from the pillow then. After a slow moment, she noticed the missing blankets and reached to pull them back up in a ball on her stomach.

“Were you dreaming?” Ginny asked quietly. Imogen turned to her, looking but not seeing the young girl.

“Yes,” she said. She sounded far away, breathless. After another moment, she slipped from the cot and crouched to pull her boots from underneath. “I’m sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”

Ginny watched as she stuck her feet into the boots, wrapped a quilt around her shoulders, and left the tiny bedroom. When she heard the front door open and close, she scrambled from her bed and onto the cot to see out the window. She could just make out Imogen sitting on the front steps of the Burrow.

“What’re you still doing up?” Bill’s voice came from the stairs. Imogen had left the door open on her way out, allowing for light from the hearth to brighten up the edges of the doorway. “Where’s Imogen?”

“She had a bad dream. She’s outside, now.” Bill came to the window to see where Ginny was pointing.

“Alright,” he said, nudging her back to her bed. “Don’t worry about it. If mum catches you up this late, you won’t have Christmas for the next ten years.”

Once Bill was gone, Ginny crept back to the window. She watched as her eldest brother stepped out of their home with two cloaks in hand, wrapping one around himself and the second over Imogen’s shoulders. She sat there for what seemed like an hour, trying to hear what Bill and his friend were talking about. For a little while, Bill was the only one talking; she could just hear the sound of him through the glass pane. And then neither of them did, while Imogen wiped the sleeves of one of Bill’s old jumpers under her eyes, over and over. Finally, Bill put an arm around her, and Imogen sank into him, her face pressed to his shoulder. And they sat there for a while longer in the cold.

Ginny didn’t remember falling asleep. She woke in the morning on the cot, under her own quilt. The room was empty, but Imogen’s trunk still sat in the corner, and the smell of breakfast wafted up the stairs. Pondwollop sat atop the trunk in a nest of Imogen’s robes, croaking and watching her with unblinking eyes. Ginny kept an unnerved eye on Pondwollop as she slipped on her fuzzy red robe and left to skip down the stairs to the living room where the family’s small, scraggly, Christmas tree stood adorned with popcorn, candles, and sashes of old satin ribbon her mother kept safe in hat box at the top of the linen closet. A moderate stack of wrapped gifts lay under the tree, pine needles scattered over them, and Ronald stooped over the arm of the doilied reading chair, neck craning to see names written on tags.

“There’s different stuff under here,” he said, and she joined him to peek at the gold wrapped parcels, all in varied shapes and sizes.“Imogen must’ve brought them. Mum would never.”

The two went to the kitchen when their mother called and sat at the table where stacks of pastries and ham, and bowls of sugared fruits were waiting. The rest of the family were already present, Fred and George playing keep away with Percy’s sleeping cap, Bill and Charlie handing off plates from Mrs Weasley, and Imogen seated at the end of the table between George and Mr Weasley, smiling at whatever Ministry story dad was telling. But she never spoke to the table, only a few soft answers here and there when any conversation steered toward her, if only to turn it back. It was a race between the siblings to see who finished breakfast first to the satisfaction of their mother and be the first to the presents under the tree. This year it was Charlie, followed immediately by Ronald.

Her brothers began sending out wrapped boxes to different corners of the room, each small stack designated to one member of the family. When that had been done, and everyone had joined around the tree, the ripping and tearing of paper began. Each of the Weasley children received the traditional gift of a knitted jumper with a corresponding initial from their mum, except for Imogen who received a warm brown scarf with a white ‘I’ and ‘S’ on each tail, for which she thanked Mrs Weasley profusely. In addition, there were special edition books, new socks, oranges, broom polish, packs of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, and then came the gold wrappers.

“Imogen, are these from you?” Mrs Weasley asked. “You shouldn’t have, love.”

“Finally,” Ronald exclaimed, noting his package labeled as ‘Ron’ instead of ‘Ronald’ like mum always did.

The gifts emerged quietly and quickly, as none of them were sure what to expect. Bill’s was a watch with two clock faces, one to be set to British time and the other for wherever he found himself after school. Charlie’s was a small photo frame encasing a shimmering dragon scale. Percy’s was simply a monogrammed leather journal with a schedule planner at the front. Fred and George both received volumes 1 & 2 of Millisand Quirk’s  _ Understanding Jokes and Pranks for Aspiring Wizards _ . Ronald, _Ron_ , received an official Chudley Cannons pennant that would later hang above his bed for several years. Mr and Mrs Weasley received a beautiful quilt enchanted so the embroidered flowers would open and close with the rising and setting of the sun. Ginny turned over the small pendant in her hand - a gold brooch in the shape of a harpy’s foot.

“If you don’t like it, it can be exchanged.” Imogen sat perched on the reading chair with her feet tucked under her.

Ginny grinned, suddenly less conscious of the gap in her smile. “I love it, thank you.”

“All of this is very thoughtful, Imogen,” said Mr Weasley. “What do you lot say?”

A chorus of thanks came from around the room, all genuine, as the gifts had been incredibly well thought about. As they cleaned up the mess, Ginny joined Imogen, Percy, and Bill in the kitchen, listening to them talk as they washed, dried and replaced the dishes to their proper homes. The house was warm and lively at Christmastime like it wasn’t any other day. In the summers, when her brothers were home from Hogwarts, there was always noise and love, but Christmas was the time when the petty arguments and sniping slowed to make way for hot cocoa and snowball fights, and sitting in front of the fire in freshly warmed pyjamas. And when her brother’s came home with friends, people from beyond the Burrow, Ginny loved it even more, because suddenly her world wasn’t as small as it always seemed.

The rest of the day was spent shoveling snow, listening to the local muggle radio station, and finding room in trunks for new gifts. In the afternoon Ginny joined Ron, Charlie, Bill, and Imogen in the garden to build snowmen, which quickly devolved into a snowball fight and left them all soggy and with coldburned noses and cheeks. Night came soon enough, forcing everyone back inside for supper and warm baths. Ginny was the first to bed, exhaustion making her unable to wait up any longer. Imogen had stayed downstairs to finish the washing up for Mrs Weasley. In her dreams, she was flying on her own broom, a cape billowing out behind her. She looped and swooped across the reeds around the Burrow, and then over London, across great swaths of land she had no names for. A sharp crack startled her awake. A sliver of light ran down her bedroom wall where the door held open, slightly ajar. She left the warmth of her bed and went to shut the door, caught only by the sound of voices from below.

“I’ll get it,” came Charlie’s voice, followed by the clinking of porcelain shards.

“I’m sorry,” said Imogen. Ginny could just see her from the doorway.

“Don’t worry about it; happens all the time in this house.” She could hear Charlie smiling.

There was a quiet moment. “I’m sorry, for before. I wasn’t thinking.”

The clinking stopped, then quickly started again, as if Charlie were hurrying up the task. Ginny heard him take the shards of the tea cup to the sink, then the scratching sound of a chair sliding across the floorboards.

“Imogen,” he said, pausing. “You don’t have to apologize, Mum and Dad understand.” He paused again, then continued, his voice quieter. “You don’t have to carry it all, either. What’s happened, it’s not your fault. None of it is.”

Imogen’s voice was almost hoarse when she spoke. “But what if it is? I followed him, and it could be fatal, Charlie.”

Ginny knew about the vaults, or what Ron said Bill told him. There were hidden places in Hogwarts where all sorts of secrets were stored. A long time ago, a student opened the vaults and curses were released upon the school, and eventually they stopped until Imogen found one of the vaults and Bill and Charlie helped her find more and defeat whatever was inside: sentient armor, boggarts, and sleeping curses. But they stopped talking about the vaults after a while, stopped telling stories of mystery and courage. Instead, they spoke in whispers when their parents weren’t around and would cut conversations short when anyone came into a room. Secrets became secrets, and all Percy would say was it was all just a bunch of upperclassmen playing pranks and getting into trouble without consequences.

An odd feeling washed over Ginny as she listened in on her brother and his friend, as if she’d stepped into a private moment, something she wasn’t supposed to see. She closed the door and climbed back in bed, turning her back to the room. She fell asleep burrowed beneath her quilt, thinking of the talon brooch.

The weeks Imogen stayed at the Burrow went by in the blink of an eye. Ginny was morose the day she was set to leave, and dragged her feet on any task she was given. Imogen and Ron spent most of the morning playing Wizard’s Chess, until Imogen lost a dozen times in a row and pulled Ginny into their bedroom to paint her nails a dazzling blue. Ginny would spend the better part of the next three days admiring the color and the way the polish shimmered in the light until it began to chip and vanish to her disappointment. Ginny helped her pack her trunk and made sure Pondwollop was secure in Imogen’s coat pocket before hugging her tightly around the waist.

“Would you mind if I write to you from time to time?” Imogen asked as they walked to the front door.

Ginny’s heart skipped a beat. “Sure,” she said, trying to keep her voice cool. “If you’d like.”

Imogen smiled. “I will then.”

As Ginny stood on the edge of the stairs watching her brothers and mother bid goodbye to Imogen, she saw something she’d only seen her parents do. Every Christmas her father installed an enchanted bundle of mistletoe over the front door. It was set to mimic the muggle tradition wherein a couple would kiss when caught beneath it. This mistletoe however, remained berryless until someone in love stood beneath it - this was always her mother or father, who would peck cheeks and lips and giggle when their children moaned in disgust. But on Imogen’s last day, she stood beneath blossomed white berries, hugging Charlie Weasley. Ginny Weasley was seven years old, and she was the only one to notice.


End file.
